Los Angeles, CA-George C. Scott, the lovably irascible actor who once kicked the 90 year old Lillian Gish, died at his Los Angeles home of an aortic anuerysm.
Scott was famed in recent years for his refusal of the Oscar he'd won for Patton , calling the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences "a bunch of effete pinko cocksuckers and whoremongerers of three penny fame."
In a bizarre parallel of his most famous character, who'd once slapped a shell-shocked soldier, Scott was equally renowned for assaulting silent film and longtime Broadway star Lillian Gish, then almost 91.
"It happened during the rehearsal of a play they were in together," reminisces playwright/screenwriter/director David Mamet. "Miss Gish had tripped and fallen and couldn't get back up. Well, Georgie, who wanted to wrap up rehearsal, just went ballistic. He started kicking her like a dog. 'Get up, you fucking old whore!', Georgie bellowed. 'What, you've fallen and you can't get up? It's been done before, bitch!' Of course, we were shocked, but in retrospect, we can all laugh about it now."
The actor, who could be astonishingly bellicose seemingly without provocation, during a 1971 audience with Pope Paul VI, snapped, "Kiss your ring?! Fuck you, you dickless homo. Kiss my rosy red ass!"
Even when mellow, Scott could be caustic. Richard Nixon recalled an afternoon in 1972 with the actor in his memoirs, RN: "I'd decided to take George on a tour of the White House and as I was showing him the Lincoln bedroom, he casually said, "You know Dick, if you spineless pencildicks had listened to Patton, Brezhnev would be giving speeches to peasants while standing in cow shit." (Attorney General John) Mitchell later told me that George identified a little too strongly with Patton.'"
Scott was laid to rest in a private ceremony after blackening the eyes of both his mourners.